On 4/8/2014 9:45 PM, wrote:
On Tue, 08 Apr 2014 20:24:22 -0400, "Mr. Luddite"
wrote:

On 4/8/2014 7:46 PM, wrote:


Disk Wizard, free from Seagate/Maxtor does a great job of creating
images, cloning drives and manipulating partitions.
It either runs from Windoze or boots from a CD if your system is
toast.
I keep a big Maxtor drive, just for the purpose since DW wants to see
one somewhere anyway.


I can't be bothered with all that. A computer is an expendable device.
When this Vista dies (that I bought 5-6 years ago) I'll just start
using the Win 7. If that dies I'll use the iMac. If that dies (or
frustrates me too much) I'll just spring for another computer.

I just download the utility programs that Windows doesn't have. Most
are free. I use Audacity quite a bit, Infranview for image viewing and
simple editing, Gimp 2 for more complex image editing and a few more,
again mostly free. That's all I need for what I do.




If you are just assuming you will never lose a hard drive, go for it.
Most people feel the same way.
I can say the most common and devastating computer failure is a hard
drive and it has been true for over 3 decades.

I used to ship a box of bad ones out every week. Occasionally one was
really OK and just got replaced because it was the "usual suspect"
(where I got my stash).
I would still burn one in for a couple of days with Norton before I
trusted it.

I have lost more drives that I bought new than used drives I brought
home from work. Western Digital is by far the leader in dead drives by
2 to one compared to every other brand.

This one was one of the most frustrating. It cost me a couple days of
work. It was only a few months old and I could have got a new one on a
warranty ... if it didn't have that .,380 wound.

http://gfretwell.com/ftp/Bad%20W-D.jpg


Again, I don't keep anything I couldn't live without on the hard drive
alone. I selectively transfer some files to an external drive and also
use flash drives to store current documents I may be working on or
important emails. I haven't trusted hard drives since I had my first
computer so I guess I am in the habit of not relying on them. That
said, the XP laptop that croaked after several years of use didn't have
a hard drive crash. It was something on the motherboard. I took the
hard drive out of it and bought one of those USB devices that could
power and read it. I was able to view many of the files using the Win7
laptop but not all. The issue there was incompatibility of XP and Win7.